According the legend, the Great Chicago Fire was started by a cow that
belonged to an Irishwoman named Catherine O’Leary. She ran a
neighborhood milk business from the barn behind her home and carelessly
leaving a kerosene lantern in the barn after her evening milking, a cow
kicked over it over and ignited the hay on the floor. Of course, no
proof of this story has ever been offered, other than the testimony of a
neighborhood liar, but the legend took hold in Chicago and was told
around the world. Regardless of how the fire started though, on Sunday
evening, October 8, 1871, Chicago became a city in flames.

In 1871, Chicago was truly a boom town. It had become
one of the fastest growing cities in America and because of this,
construction standards had been “loose” to say the least. Beyond the
downtown area, the city was miles and miles of rickety wooden
structures. Most of the working-class neighborhoods consisted of wooden
cottages and tenement houses, all of which made for dangerous fuel in
the event of a fire. However, Chicago was not wooden “shantytown”,
although even the downtown hotels, banks, theaters and stores needed
constant repair. Just a month before the Great Fire, the Chicago TRIBUNE
had remarked on the shabby construction of the brick and stone downtown
buildings. The newspaper warned that they were weak and seemed to be
falling apart and mentioned that hardly a week passed when some stone
facade or cornice was not falling into the street, narrowly missing the
skull of some hapless pedestrian.

Experience the Ghosts, Local Legends & Best Kept
Secrets of the Windy City!Weird Chicago Tours!

And, they said, if the city didn’t fall down, it was liable to burn!
“The absence of rain for three weeks, “ reported the TRIBUNE, “has
left everything in so flammable a condition that a spark might set a
fire that would sweep from end to end of the city”.

Although ignoring the legend of the O’Leary cow,
the Great Chicago Fire did break out in the vicinity of the O’Leary
home at 137 De Koven Street on the west side. The home and barn were
located in what was then called the “West Division”, and area of the
city that was west of the south branch of the river. Whether the cow
kicked over the lantern or not, conditions were perfect for a fire. The
summer had been dry and less than three inches of rain had fallen
between July and October.

There had been other fires in the city already. On
the previous day, October 7, four blocks of the city had burned. This
conflagration was said to have left the fire department so exhausted
that they were slow to respond to another alarm at De Koven Street. By
the time they arrived, it was already too late. By 10:30 that evening,
it was reported that the fire was officially out of control. A strong,
dry wind from the southwest made matters even worse, blowing the fire
toward the very heart of the city. In what seemed like minutes, mills
and factories along the river were on fire. Additional buildings, hit by
fiery missiles from the main blaze, also began burning from top to
bottom. The air was filled with sparks and cinders that contemporary
accounts described as looking like “red rain”.

In just over an hour, the west side of the city was
in ashes and the fire showed no signs of slowing down. It hungrily
jumped the Chicago River and pushed toward the center of the city. Among
the first buildings to be engulfed was the new Parmalee Omnibus and
Stage Company at the southeast corner of Jackson and Franklin Streets. A
flying brand also struck the South Side Gas Works and soon this
structure burst into flames, creating a new and larger center for the
fire. At this point, even the grease and oil-covered river caught fire
and the surface of the water shimmered with heat and flames. In moments,
the fire also spread to the banks and office buildings along LaSalle
Street.
Soon, the inferno became impossible to battle with more than a dozen
different locations burning at once. The fire swept through Wells,
Market and Franklin Streets, igniting more than 500 different buildings.
One by one, these great structures fell. The TRIBUNE building, long
vaunted as “fire proof”, was turned into a smoking ruin as were the
great hotels like the Palmer House, the Tremont and the Sherman.
Marshall Field’s grand department store, along with hundreds of other
businesses, were reduced to blazing ash.

In the early morning hours of Monday, the fire
reached the courthouse, which stood in a block surrounded by LaSalle,
Clark, Randolph and Washington Streets. A burning timber landed on the
building’s wooden cupola and the soon turned into a fire that blazed
out of control. The building was ordered evacuated. The prisoners, who
had begun to scream and shake the bars of their cells as smoke filled
the air, were released. Most of them were allowed to simply go free but
the most dangerous of them were shackled and taken away under guard.
Just after 2:00 AM, the bell of the courthouse tolled for the last time
and it crashed through the remains of the building to the ground beneath
it. The roaring sound made by the building’s collapse was reportedly
heard more than a mile away.

Around this same time, the State Street Bridge,
leading to the north side, also caught fire and soon the fire began to
devours the area on the north side of the river as well. Soon, stables,
warehouse and breweries were also burning. Then, the fire swept into the
luxurious residential district surrounding Cass, Huron, Ontario, Rush
and Dearborn Streets. Here, stood the mansions of some of Chicago’s
oldest and most prominent families. By daylight, these beautiful homes
were nothing but ruins.

By 3:00 AM that morning, the pumps at the Waterworks on Pine Street had
been destroyed and by Monday evening, the only intact structure for
blocks was the gothic stone Water Tower. Somehow, it managed to survive
the devastation. Legend has it that this structure is haunted today by
the ghost of a man who stayed on the job during the fire, continuing to
pump the water as the fire got closer. The story goes that this heroic
city worker waited until the last possible minute and then took his own
life rather than be engulfed in the flames. His ghost has reportedly
been seen hanging through an upper window of the tower.

The flames were not the only thing that residents of
the city had to worry about either. In the early hours of the fire,
looting and violence had broken out in the city. Saloon keepers, hoping
that it might prevent their taverns from being destroyed, had foolishly
rolled barrels of whiskey out into the streets. Soon, men and women from
all classes were staggering in the streets, thoroughly intoxicated. The
drunks and the looters did not comprehend the danger they were in
however and many were trampled in the streets. Plundered goods were also
tossed aside and were lost in the fire, abandoned by the looters as the
fire drew near. Although many were injured, the stories of lawlessness
were greatly exaggerated in later accounts. They were overblown into
stories of lynchings and murders by “villainous Negroes” and
Irishmen. The tales were proved to be absolutely false.
Worse perhaps than the looters were the drivers of wagons and carts who
charged outrageous prices to haul away household possessions and
baggage. This only added to the misery of the fleeing people and
compounded the chaos. In his book, CITY OF THE CENTURY, author Donald L.
Miller described the scene as the streets thronged with people... crying
children searched for their parents... processions of refugees milled
everywhere... wealthy ladies panicked, wearing all of the jewelry they
owned... immigrant women ran, carrying mattresses on their heads...
half-naked prostitutes scurried from rented “cribs” on Wells and
Clark Streets.... people carried the sick and the crippled on chairs or
on makeshift litters... even the bodies of the dead were transported in
coffins or wrapped in bed sheets.... It combined to create a vision that
most of us cannot even imagine today.

Thankfully, the fire began to die on the morning of
October 10, when steady and soaking rains began to fall on Chicago. The
people of the city were devastated, as was the city itself. Over 300
people were dead and another 100,000 were without homes or shelter. The
fire had cut a swath through the city that was four miles long and about
two-thirds of a mile wide. Over $200 million in property had been
destroyed. Records, deeds, archives, libraries and priceless artwork
were all lost although a little of it had survived in public and private
vaults. In the destruction of the Federal Building, which, among other
things, housed the post office, more than $100,000 in currency was
burned.

Chicago had become a blasted and charred
wasteland.

In the first days after the fire, wild rumors flew
about more looting in the city. It was said that criminals were now
breaking into safes and vaults in the ruined business district. Local
business owners hired Allan Pinkerton to deploy his detectives around
the remains of stores and banks and soon, six companies of Federal
troops arrived under the command of General Phillip Sheridan to assist
in maintaining order. Two days later, Chicago’s Mayor, Roswell Mason,
placed the city under martial law, entrusting Sheridan and his troops to
watch over it.
Although Sheridan saw no sign of the reported murders and looting, he
did recruit a volunteer home guard of about 1000 men to patrol unburned
areas of the city. He also enforced a curfew, much to the chagrin of
Illinois governor John M. Palmer, who felt that martial law was uncalled
for and unnecessary. Mayor Mason was heavily influenced by local
business leaders however and ignored Palmer’s order to withdraw the
troops. The state of martial law didn’t last for long though. A few
days after it went into effect, a local businessman (and one of those
responsible for pushing Mason into bringing in Sheridan) was
accidentally killed by one of the volunteer home guard. In spite of
this, Sheridan did receive orders from President Grant that left four
companies of men in the city through the end of the year.

As terrible as the disaster was, Chicago was not
dead... merely shaken and stunned. Within days of the fire, rebuilding
began on a grand scale. The vigor of the city’s rebirth amazed the
rest of the nation and within three years, it once again dominated the
western United States. It soared from the ashes like the fable phoenix
and became the home of the first skyscraper in 1885, then passed the one
million mark in population five years later. The Great Chicago Fire was
the beginning of a new metropolis, much greater than it could have ever
become if the horrific fire had never happened at all.